386 WITH SCOTT : THE SILVER LINING 



Beacon Sandstone debris. A little lake lay at the foot, and 

 its flat top made a splendid camp site. * Here, on soil formed 

 of real sand, like that near Sydney, we pitched our tent : ' — 

 probably the first time such a thing had been done in Victoria 

 Land. We found a bounteous water-supply by cutting 

 through the ice of the little lake, for alongside a big black 

 boulder the radiation of the sun's heat had melted the ice. 

 This was a great saving, for none of our precious oil was now 

 wasted in melting the ice." 



There was an extraordinary mixture of dolerite and sand- 

 stone all over the Gondola Ridge. The sandstone was 

 characterized by blebs, which in Germany would be called 

 "Knoten." We called it briefly " smallpoxy," and it did not 

 look hopeful for fossils. However, there was some shale near 

 the tent, which looked more hopeful. We did not find much 

 beyond worm-casts and ripple-marks at first. 



The discovery of fossils was of especial importance to 

 Australia, because the central Antarctic area had served as a 

 distributing base for Australian animals and plants. The 

 marsupials are represented by a few forms in South America 

 and New Guinea, and there seems little doubt that land ex- 

 tended more or less continuously between these limits. Earlier 

 still South Africa was joined to this Antarctic world, for land- 

 worms allied to those in the other southern continents are 

 now known from Cape Colony. 



When Gran and I returned from our first survey of the 

 ridge we found that Debenham had already been successful in 

 the shales. He had found some vesicular horny plates. I 

 turned to. and soon obtained two large pieces like the red 

 tiles capping a roof-ridge. They were nearly two inches 

 long, and had a well-marked keel. There were also smaller 

 complete plates. On our return to Europe these were iden- 

 tified as the armour-plate of primitive fish, and probably of 

 Devonian age. So that our find on Gondola Ridge added a 

 new epoch to Antarctic fossils, for Cambrian limestones were 

 known, and Permian coal-measures were indicated by Shackle- 

 ton's specimens. These fish plates identified another set of 

 sediments midway between them. 



The moraines near our camp, though by no means so 

 abundant as on a smaller European glacier, were the most 

 important which I saw actually on a glacier in the Antarctic. 



